PGA: Setting Up for a Chaotic Final Round

Jim Furyk holds a one-shot lead heading into the final round of the PGA Championship.

Pittsford, N.Y. — Ordinarily in a PGA Tour event, players six strokes off the lead at the start of the final round would be extreme long shots to win. At majors, given the sphincter-squeezing effect of playing for history and the difficulty of the course setups, with disaster looming on every shot, strange things happen.

Nick Faldo won the 1996 Masters after Greg Norman, six strokes clear of the field when the final round began, shot 78. Phil Mickelson won the British Open last month from five strokes back.

Jim Furyk, at nine-under-par, enters Sunday’s final round at the PGA Championship here at Oak Hill Country Club knowing that five players are stalking him within four of the lead.

One shot back is Jason Dufner, whose 63 on Friday broke the Oak Hill course record and tied the all-time lowest score in a major.

Two shots back is Henrik Stenson, who finished second both at last week’s WGC-Bridgestone and at the British Open. Three shots back is Jonas Blixt, who won the Greenbrier Classic in July and shot a bogey-free 66 on Saturday.

Steve Stricker and Masters champ Adam Scott are tied another shot back, four off the lead. Throw in a resurgent Rory McIlroy (he shot 67 Saturday) and the ever-threatening Lee Westwood, tied six strokes back and both capable of making a big early move, and you’ve got the makings for a chaotic, madhouse final round.

In the last five PGA Championships, only McIlroy last year went on to win after leading or sharing the 54-hole lead. In the last 19 majors, only four 54-hole leaders have gone on to win.

“Well, I’d rather be one ahead,” Furyk said after his Saturday round of 68, when asked if it’s easier to play from slightly behind or with the lead. “There’s going to be a winning score tomorrow, and whatever that score is, it means I don’t have to shoot as low as everyone else, if that makes sense.”

That statement is definitely logical, but Furyk, the 2003 U.S. Open winner, will be fighting demons. Last year he led after 54 holes in four tournaments, but lost every time. Most agonizingly, that includes the U.S. Open, where he bogeyed two of his last three holes, and the Bridgestone, where he double-bogeyed the final hole.

He also lost two of his three matches at the Ryder Cup, including a pivotal Sunday singles match against Sergio Garcia. Furyk was one up with two to play but bogeyed the last two holes.

The media, necessarily but uncomfortably, brought up these failures this week. Furyk half-jokingly complained about the media bringing him down from his high with such negative questioning—“I’m not in the grave yet,” he said.—but acknowledged he’s confronted the issue himself.

“I’ve talked about it countless times, what I could have done at the stretch at the U.S. Open or the Ryder Cup or at Akron better to change those situations. They are gone. I’ve made peace with that,” he said. “I’m a more mature player now and hopefully I draw some positives from it.”

As what he plans to do differently if he’s still in the hunt down the stretch, he said, not much, other than “perform better” and work at staying within himself.

“You kind of have to have a cornerback mentality. You’re going to get beat up in this game a little bit,” he said. He is looking at Sunday’s round as an opportunity, not a do-or-die situation. “I’m going to have fun with it and I’m going to enjoy the opportunity.”

Dufner has his own demons to fight. He is famous on the course for seeming almost comatose, but I followed him and Adam Scott for all 18 holes Saturday and you can see that’s he’s tightly wired underneath. It takes a lot of effort and concentration to stay as calm on the outside as Dufner does. Up close you can see the wires.

After 31 straight holes with no score worse than par, Dufner double-bogeyed the fifth hole Saturday. He flared his drive into a creek, and looked uncomfortable doing so, re-teeing the ball one pace further back, checking the wind, removing debris from the ground behind the ball and backing off when he heard a rustle of noise from the gallery at an adjacent green.

Out near the creek, he used his driver to measure the distance from the creek for his penalty drop and slammed the club into his bag. He also tossed his driver away in disgust on the 18th tee, after hitting that drive into the right rough.

On the 16th green, he made a tetchy short putt and stiffly strode past where I was standing—not like a guy relieved to have just saved par, but like a guy who had just blown an important job interview and was not happy. His eyes on the course have more of the steel of Raymond Floyd in them than the vacant glaze of the slumping figure captured in that photo of him in an elementary school classroom, which created the “Dufnering” mini-craze earlier this year on Twitter.

I asked him after the round if he had “fun.”

“It was enjoyable at certain points of the round, not enjoyable at other points. It’s tough to be out there competing for these championships. It’s what I’ve always practiced for and what I’ve always dreamed for. In that sense, it’s fun. But these golf courses put a lot of stress on your game,” he said. “You have got to be really prepared and when doubt creeps in to kind of put that in another spot in your mind and be confident. It’s kind of a tussle out there between yourself and your mind.”

The biggest doubts seem to seize Dufner over short putts. He missed a two-footer for birdie on the fourth hole Saturday (moments before that flared drive on the fifth) and almost missed his short putt for par on 18.

Such misfires are not uncommon for Dufner. He ranks 178th on Tour, near the bottom, in putting from three to five feet. In 162 chances from that distance this year, he has missed a shocking 32. He uses a big, thick grip on his putter, said to keep the wrists quiet, but players can also lose touch and feel with thick grips.

His forward press when putting strikes me as tension enhancing, rather than tension releasing. Unlike his well-known waggling routine before full shots—eight or nine big wrist cocks (I counted) before each swing, and a fluid transition into the ball strike itself—on putts he forward presses slightly with his hands and freezes there for a count before initiating the stroke.

If Dufner makes it to the back nine Sunday with a chance for a win, his biggest challenge may be canning those short putts. He putted well down the stretch at the 2011 PGA at Atlanta Athletic Club, before losing in a playoff to Keegan Bradley. But a lot of blood has flowed under the bridge since then.

Sunday’s other great mini-drama within the bigger drama will take place in the penultimate twosome of Swedes, Stenson and Blixt. No Swede has ever won a men’s major.

“That would be huge. I mean, it’s a very small country,” Blixt said. “You set up your goals high and that’s a very high goal for both me and Henrik. To win one would be very, very special.”

Blixt on Sunday will want more of the kind of luck he had Saturday. His errant drive on the final hole flew directly into the pocket of a retired doctor in the gallery. Under the rules, he took a drop where the good doctor stood and nailed his approach shot to three feet from the hole. That birdie capped his round of 66.

“It was very fortunate that he was standing where he was so I didn’t have to deal with too many trees and stuff like that,” he said. Perhaps he should ask the doctor to follow him around the course in the final round.

The weather in the Rochester area Sunday should be ideal: temperatures in the mid-seventies and five to 10 miles per hour breezes. The course will be drier and firmer than it has been, which usually favors the better all-around golfers. Atop this year’s final round leaderboard, that includes everyone.

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